Take your pick and come by from October 29 to November 3 to leave an epitaph, parting wishes, wise thoughts and witty words as Discordia prepares to depart for the netherworld, the other side, perpetual archivization and/or possible future reincarnations.

Aileen's story, "How can you tell it's art?" made me think of an installation I saw last month at the Sonar Festival in Barcelona. If you can't tell from the photo, in the picture frames is live, black and white ASCII video of the people standing in front of the displays. The text on the right says, "Motorola - Intelligence Everywhere." On the pink stand to the left are mobile phones, apparently the product being marketed here. (I guess the connection is camera phones? Seems a bit oblique to me... ) Anyway, media artists have been creating lo-tech ASCII video projects for years as a means to subvert the hi-tech aesthetics of commercial media. Is this simply a case of the cliche "The mainstream appropriates the avant-garde?" ...

Since Günther Selichar is one of the few artists who can invariably convince me to change my mind, every time I start insisting again that I don't like pictures, I just posted an announcement about his current project to EA Dobbs. I have only been to New York once in my life - about two months ago for three days - but having seen Times Square, now I am trying to imagine what this project could look like there. With all the lights and moving images and movement everywhere, how can you tell that this is art? Is art still art if it is indistinguishable from its surroundings?

I recently came across Design For The World - an organisation that partners organisations in need and voluntary designers (graphic designers, industrial designers and interior and architectural designers) in order to provide voluntary design for those in need. Another organisation, Interconnection - specialises purely in voluntary web design for humanitarian causes who may require such a service.

[editor's note, by Aileen]
While the investigation of Steve Kurtz and the Critical Art Ensemble is being discussed across all the relevant mailing lists, it occurred to me that Discordia might be useful for other thoughts about the work of the Critical Art Ensemble not directly related to the current situation. For that reason I decided to move this post from last year to a more prominent position again.
For news, background information and calls for solidarity, see http://www.caedefensefund.org

While reviewing the larger bits of writing I have done over the last few years, I realised, slightly worriedly, that all the major arguments are illustrated with quotes from the Critical Art Ensemble.

Here is a poster to hang on the wall of Discordia. Next week George Bush is coming to France, the land which invented Freedom Fries (I know, I know, it wasn't France, it was Belgium). He will be coming along with other freedom fighters, Vladimir Poutine, to name but one. Our very own homeboy Jacques Chirac will be having them, though he would have probably prefered Richard Nixon, who was more in his class for trickiness. George, however, will come explain to the rest of us how him and the rest of the boys, Rummy and Cheney and Perly are the True Guardians of liberty, democracy (you name it), they did it once before, and now they're doing it again, and as for the rest of us, we are all, well, errorists.